It's a long story
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Publication Date: August 17th, 2021
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Posted: Sep 25, 2019
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Posted: Jan 13, 2020
"Science Be Dammed is an alarming reminder of the high stakes in the management--and perils in the mismanagement--of water in the western United States. It seems deceptively simple: even when clear evidence was available that the Colorado River could not sustain ambitious dreaming and planning by decision-makers throughout the twentieth century, river planners and political operatives irresponsibly made the least sustainable and most dangerous long-term decisions.
Arguing that the science of the early twentieth century can shed new light on the mistakes at the heart of the over-allocation of the Colorado River, authors Eric Kuhn and John Fleck delve into rarely reported early studies, showing that scientists warned as early as the 1920s that there was not enough water for the farms and cities boosters wanted to build. Contrary to a common myth that the authors of the Colorado River Compact did the best they could with limited information, Kuhn and Fleck show that development boosters selectively chose the information needed to support their dreams, ignoring inconvenient science that suggested a more cautious approach..jpg)
Today water managers are struggling to come to terms with the mistakes of the past. Focused on both science and policy, Kuhn and Fleck unravel the tangled web that has constructed the current crisis. With key decisions being made now, including negotiations for rules governing how the Colorado River water will be used after 2026, Science Be Dammed offers a clear-eyed path forward by looking back.
Understanding how mistakes were made is crucial to understanding our contemporary problems. Science Be Dammed offers important lessons in the age of climate change about the necessity of seeking out the best science to support the decisions we make."
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How a 100-year-old miscalculation drained the Colorado River
"By now, you may have heard that the Colorado River is drying up.
The river’s flow is down by about 20 percent, compared to the 1900s, and the two largest reservoirs it feeds are less than a third full. The water in Lake Mead, the nation’s biggest reservoir, has dropped more than 150 feet in the last two decades, leaving little water for the more than 40 million people who depend on the river. . .
". . .Ignoring the best science of the time, officials claimed the river could provide about 20 million acre-feet per year (an acre-foot is the amount of water needed to fill an acre with one foot of water), according to the 2021 book Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River. That number was way too high, the authors write, meaning that officials promised states water that simply didn’t exist.
“They had conjured up a larger Colorado River than nature could actually provide,” wrote authors Eric Kuhn, a retired water official, and John Fleck, a writer and former director of the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program. “The twenty-first century’s problems on the river are the inevitable result of critical decisions made by water managers and politicians who ignored the science available at the time.”
I spoke to co-author John Fleck about how officials in the past miscalculated so badly, and where we go now.. .
Benji Jones
Why was it so inconvenient to be realistic about the amount of water in the river?
John Fleck
The promise of a lot of water made the political deal-making easier. You could divide up the river and say to each of the seven states: “You want to irrigate a whole bunch of acres? Plenty for you. You want to pump a bunch of water across the desert of California? Plenty for you.” You didn’t have to have hard conversations about what life under limitation was going to be like.
Benji Jones
How big was the difference between what LaRue measured and what the negotiators ultimately used to divvy up the river’s water in the 1922 Colorado River Compact?
John Fleck
Negotiators believed — and negotiated a deal that said — there was as much as 20 million acre-feet flowing from the river each year. LaRue’s estimate was closer to 15 million. Today, we know it’s 12 million. But that’s the climate change world. It was a big gap.
Benji Jones
Is that gap ultimately why we’re in this position today? Basically, 100 years ago, regulators over-allocated water of the Colorado River, based on faulty numbers?
John Fleck
Yes. You have communities across the West who made good-faith decisions to build cities, farms, canals, and dams based on what they thought was a promise of water. They were told that there was enough water. That turns out to have been bogus.✓
. . .The difficulty is at the political interface. It is difficult for a hypothetical governor to go before their voters and provide them with bad news about water. What a governor really needs to say is: “We have a lot less water, we have to change.”
[The 100-year-old Colorado River Compact, wrong numbers and all, is still the primary agreement upon which management of the Colorado River is based.]
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